Waiting
by schweinsty
Summary: Hitsugaya reflects on Hinamori, falling behind, and catching up.


Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach

A.N. My second venture into HitsuHina territory, but I don't think it's quite as fluffy this time around - more angst now, but there is fluff at the end. Constructive Criticism is welcome. Hope you all enjoy : ).

Waiting

Every week, Hinamori and I used to go to the market in Rukongai and buy a watermelon. We would put it in a small cart and I would insist on dragging it back home myself, because girls – especially girls like Hinamori – shouldn't have to do that kind of thing if there was a man around.

Unfailingly, I would be so weighed down I would fall behind and lose sight of Hinamori, but I never worried. I knew she would stop at every street corner and stand there until I caught up. It didn't ever occur to me to worry for her own safety – I knew she would stand there and look back for me if the world started collapsing around us. I asked her, once, why she waited. She got a puzzled look on her face and said she figured it was that she knew I was doing my best to catch up, and she wanted to be the first person I saw when I got to where I wanted to be. At the time, that made no sense to me, but it was hardly something that would weigh heavily on my mind.

Even when she left for the academy I didn't worry; I knew my Momo would be waiting for me, no matter how long it took me to catch up.

The day I took the entrance exams I knew something was different, that from now on things were going to change. After I blew a (small) hole in the wall while they were testing my reiatsu levels, the whispers started, and they never let up. Genius. Prodigy. At first it was things like that, things that I could ignore, easily, because I knew what I was and what I was not, and anything else was flattery, and flattery was nothing. Then, once I started beating everyone in sparring and kidou and trying to tell them how to do things right the whispers got quiet and nasty, and I could hear words like 'unnatural, inhuman' following me around everywhere I walked.

But I didn't care. I didn't care about the academy or the people in it: I was just in it so I could reach Hinamori, and when I'd caught up to her and become a shinigami, she'd be the first person to say hello, and everything would be wonderful.

And it was, for a while. When I graduated from the academy – in record time – and got out, the first person I went to see after receiving my orders was her, and she squealed and said hello and ruffled my hair, and all was right, and I thought the fact that I was ranked above her didn't matter, even though she had been there for several years and I couldn't even find the mess. But soon enough there came a nagging feeling that something was off, something was different. Not terribly bad, mind, you, just different.

We used to go out and practice together sometimes, much like we had played when we were children, and as I had usually taken the lead in our childhood games, it didn't bother me too much that I was helping her out more than she was me. I only really started to notice a difference when I achieved Shikai in a week and spent the next four months showing her how to do it.

It wasn't until I reached bankai that I realized just how the tables had turned. I was a fifth seat and the youngest person ever to do it, though no one but Hinamori would know about it for a good ten years, and the final part had only taken me two days – pretty close to record time, according to Seireitei record. Hinamori, however, was seventh seat in her division, and was just starting to master shikai. It was then that I knew what had been apparent ever since I had graduated: We weren't children buying watermelons in Rukongai anymore, and I wasn't the one struggling to catch up. I don't think anything's ever made me feel so lonely. Hinamori, the one who could reach down and ruffle my hair, the one I always raced against and lost, had fallen behind, and there was nothing I could do that could make her go as fast as me.

Two years after everyone found out I had reached bankai they made me a captain, and Hinamori fell further and further back. Even when she became a vice-captain I couldn't bring myself to hope: there were other vice-captains that were stronger than her, and they would be first in line to be my ranked equals. Even though we joked and laughed together once in a while, things weren't the same anymore. No matter how much I would rail against her pet-names, there wasn't a moment that I didn't wish Hinamori would ruffle my hair, call me Shiro-chan, and there would be nothing I could say that would remind either of us of the ever-growing gap between us as I sprinted ahead and she trotted further and further behind.

Then, of course, came Aizen's betrayal, and Hinamori stopped trying altogether. For months it was like she fell in a ditch and stayed there, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do to get her out.

It was a long time before she stood up again, and even longer before she could gather enough courage to take a step forward, but finally she did, and you know what?

I'm not sprinting forward anymore. I'm not even going to walk. Instead, I'm going to stand here at the corner waiting, because right now she's doing her best to catch up, and when she gets here I don't want it to be Kira, or Renji, or Hisagi, or, hell, even Yachiru, I want it to be me, that's standing here and waiting to say hello.


End file.
